Chairman of CEPEP, Ashton Ford

CEPEP chair­man Ash­ton Ford storms out of a Joint Select Committee meet­ing.

The JSC on State Enterprises, chaired by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira, was in the process of ex­am­ining the op­er­a­tions and ac­counts of CEPEP yesterday, when there was contention.

The meet­ing be­gan with Mr. Ford de­tail­ing a litany of woes faced by the board and dating back to the period of 2010 and 2015.

However when the mat­ter re­gard­ing CEPEP’s ex­ter­nal auditors Hardy’s char­tered ac­coun­tants came up, Mr. Ford took of­fense.

Mr. Ford explained that the au­di­tors re­signed just when the fi­nan­cial state­ment for 2015 was due.

Yesterday Mr. Ford was not pleased with how the meeting was being conducted and said he did not think it proper for him to stay.

On TV6’s Morning Edition earlier, Mr. Ford said auditor Anil Bridgelal refused to work with CEPEP’s audit committee but was now being given priority at the JSC.

Responding to the incident before him, Chairman Viera was disappointed.

According to records this is the first time a state enterprise’s chairman has walked out of a JSC meeting.